It’s been a busy first quarter, but I should have a little more time available to blog now.

I’ve just completed shooting my sessions for the SSWUG Business Intelligence Virtual Conference, which has been one of the things occupying my time recently. I had a few changes in my lineup of presentations. With the recent announcements about changes to SQL Data Services (SDS), there was really no reason to present the sessions on using SSIS and SSRS against SDS. If you haven’t seen the changes, you can review them here, but as a quick overview, Microsoft is eliminating the ACE model and the requirement to access SDS through SOAP or REST. Instead, they will offer traditional TDS access to SDS, meaning that accessing a database in the cloud will be a very similar experience to accessing an on-premise SQL Server. In fact, many tools, like SSRS and SSIS, that required custom extensions in order to use SDS under the old model, should work out of the box with the new model. So, there really wasn’t much point in presenting how to do something that won’t be necessary any longer.

So, I ended up still doing the SDS 101 session, which gives an overview of the changes to the service, and some reasons why you might want to look into this for new applications. I also did two other sessions. “Doing More (ETL) With Less (Effort) by Automating SSIS” focuses on how to build packages programmatically, and focuses on some of the simpler options for accomplishing this, like EzAPI. “Processing Flat Files with SSIS” runs through many of the common issues developers encounter when using SSIS against flat files, and shows a number of ways to work around those problems. If you have trouble working with flat files, this would be a good session to attend.

You can register for the conference here, and if you use the code SPVJWESP09 when you register, you should get $10 off the registration fee.